A mysterious blob of frozen soil, rocks and trees is creeping toward the Dalton Highway, threatening to block the haul road that serves as a lifeline for Alaska's oil and gas industry. It could happen as soon as end of the decade.

University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers who have been studying the slow-moving landslide just south of the Brooks Range since 2008 say it is crawling closer to the highway every day. The scientists suspect climate change may have caused the 300-foot-wide finger of debris -- once thought to be motionless -- to gain speed as it slides toward the road.

"It's this giant moving mass and it's going to destroy anything in its way," said Rob Harper, a spokesman for the Alaska University Transportation Center.

The wave of frozen mud, snow and plants slowly spilled from the mountains within the past 5,000 years, researchers said. It is now within about 150 feet of the highway. Moving at a average rate of more than a centimeter a day, it could swamp the Dalton within five to 10 years, said Institute of Northern Engineering hydrologist Ronald Daanen.

"The sooner we come up with a viable solution, the better it is. There isn't a lot of time left," said Daanen, who will present information about the hazard at a worldwide meeting on geophysical sciences next week in San Francisco.

Transportation planners across the country are grappling with extreme weather such as floods, storms and unusual snowfall due to changing weather patterns. In the Alaska Arctic, the frozen debris encroaching on the Dalton Highway presents a new kind of puzzle.

As permafrost shrinks and summers grow longer in the southcentral Brooks Range, researchers wonder: How do you stop an accelerating, landslide-like ocean of mud and splintered trees from destroying one of the state...

Are they not teaching ANYTHING in schools anymore? Do we have to re-discover the obvious over and over?

“Climate change” [formerly known as “Global Warming” before it started to get colder] had nothing to do with this, since it has been observed both before and after the fake data models they used

When water freezes it expands. That is why you need anti-freeze in your car -so you don't crack your solid metal engine block.

When soil has a lot of water in it, it expends when the water in it freezes, then moves when it melts. Soil on top of a hill expands and contracts more frequently than deeper buried soil, and gravity carries it downhill.

This can appear to be a creeping ‘motion’ over decades.

Go look at an old set of telegraph posts- they USED TO BE straight up and down

Are they not teaching ANYTHING in schools anymore? Do we have to re-discover the obvious over and over?

“Climate change” [formerly known as “Global Warming” before it started to get colder] had nothing to do with this, since it has been observed both before and after the fake data models they used

When water freezes it expands. That is why you need anti-freeze in your car -so you don't crack your solid metal engine block.

When soil has a lot of water in it, it expends when the water in it freezes, then moves when it melts. Soil on top of a hill expands and contracts more frequently than deeper buried soil, and gravity carries it downhill.

This can appear to be a creeping ‘motion’ over decades.

Go look at an old set of telegraph posts- they USED TO BE straight up and down

Hate to break it to you but, this is nothing special. The "frozen debris lobes" have a scientific name, Gelifluction Lobes. These form in areas of both stable an unstable permafrost. The only real reason for acceleration might be because its moving down a steep part of the slope. The chances of this taking out the road are very slim since it requires a slope of at least 15-20 degrees to move. The flat sides of the road will eventually stop it. No need for a bridge or wasting millions of dollars to fix something that will not be an issue. Once the lobe reaches the flat part it will spread out into a piedmont type lobe. Any new material coming down the slope will just overlap the first and so on. This is a natural process and trying to stop it is as stupid as referring to climate change as "global warming".

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Yep. This is nothing new. Also called 'slumping'. (BTW, the headline in the paper was "Mysterious Moving Blob Threatens Dalton Highway" - really ADN? Could you possibly be any more sensational?)

These “researchers” are a bunch of clueless dimwits (probably with pinheads) who can’t figure out what to do with a 1-cm-advancing-per-day bit of dirt and rocks!!!!!! Maybe they could take their worthless dissertations and pile them up as some sort of dam. Or better yet...why don’t they just lie down there like cord wood for eons to come?

My God, this climate change triggered blob is going to kill all the polar bears in Alaska? So the polar bears will all be stuck on little pieces of ice and helplessly float away from land and starve or be crushed by this landslide in their sleep.

Doesn't matter. As someone who lives in a "bottom" I can state with absolute, 100% certainty that, frozen or thawed, $#!+ flows downhill...always has...always will.

Whether it's a pipeline, railroad or a road, following along the banks of rivers and streams in mountainous terrain is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to build. The longevity of the product of those economies however, is another story.

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